Thursday, October 09, 2014: Within the week of announcement of PM Narendra Modi’s campaign Make-in-India, Nokia announced its decision to discontinue the manufacturing operations in the country. The mobile company stated that it is suspending the operations at its Sriperumbudur plant in Chennai, which once had over 8,000 employees, and presently has 1,200-1,500 on its rolls.
This plant was not even the part of Nokia-Microsoft deal, which was finalised in April, owing to the 210,000 million tax claim, because of which the income tax department had declined the permission for the plant to be transferred till the dues get cleared.
Microsoft has emphasised on the termination of Nokia and Microsoft transitional services agreement from 1 November, as per which it was decided to keep the factory working. However, Nokia will now suspend the services without any orders from Microsoft.
The company noted that it was trying to diminish the impact of it over the employees as far as possible and had even informed about the suspension to the labour commissioner. A Soundararajan, general secretary of the Centre of Indian Trade Unions, said that the company’s decision is illegal and that they had cleverly used the word suspension, which does not require government approval.
